"Aviation" octagonal, from the mural series "The Building of the House of Wisdom," Charlton Yarnall House
Date
1910–11Medium
Oil on canvasCredit Line
Gift of the Southeast Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Red Cross, 1963Dimensions
29 x 29 1/8 inDescription & Inscriptions
Arching over the lunette Man and Science were three octagonal panels celebrating the technological innovations that were shaping the new century: Communion throughout Space, The Search for Light, and Aviation.
Aviation is inscribed, “They mount up with wings as eagles.” An aviator who has flown into the stars leans away from an eagle like Michelangelo’s Prophet Jonah shrinking from the whale. It was noted at the time that although Leonardo da Vinci had attempted flight in the Italian Renaissance, it was the Wright Brothers who achieved the first manned flight with their biplane in 1903, during the American Renaissance.
Aviation is inscribed, “They mount up with wings as eagles.” An aviator who has flown into the stars leans away from an eagle like Michelangelo’s Prophet Jonah shrinking from the whale. It was noted at the time that although Leonardo da Vinci had attempted flight in the Italian Renaissance, it was the Wright Brothers who achieved the first manned flight with their biplane in 1903, during the American Renaissance.
